


Where the Heart Is

by fireflysglow_archivist



Category: Firefly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-12-29
Updated: 2005-12-29
Packaged: 2019-04-29 06:31:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14467002
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fireflysglow_archivist/pseuds/fireflysglow_archivist
Summary: Three vignettes on Serenity, and how she's home.





	Where the Heart Is

**Author's Note:**

> Note from alice ttlg, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [Firefly’s Glow](https://fanlore.org/wiki/Firefly%27s_Glow), and was moved to the AO3 as part of the Open Doors project in 2018. I tried to reach out to all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are the creator and would like to claim this work, please contact me using the e-mail address on [Firefly's Glow collection profile](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/fireflysglow/profile).
> 
>  **Author's notes:** Slight spoilers for "Out of Gas" and "Our Mrs. Reynolds"

  
Author's notes: Slight spoilers for "Out of Gas" and "Our Mrs. Reynolds"  


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Where the Heart Is

## Where the Heart Is

Title: Where the Heart is and Other Ideas About Home Author: Claramata  
Description: Three of Serenity's crew muse on the idea of home, Almost inspired by a line from the movie "Ya'll got on this boat for different reasons, but you all come to the same place", just how such different people could come to view the same boat as a home. Spoilers: A joke you won't get unless you've seen "Out of Gas", and the mention of Mal's home planet, revealed in episode "Our Mrs. Reynolds" A/N: Two of these were originally done for the FireflyFriday fic challenge on LJ Disclaimer: I do not own these characters, the almighty Joss does. 

1}Simon 

Simon often wondered what went on in his sister's chaotic brain. She was the purest form of mystery, his little sister, but also his greatest joy. There were times when she would be almost sane, almost the River he knew when they were children, a smile, a word, a look, and he was back home. But that home had always been home because River was there, because his sweet, silly sister was there. There was no other reason. It had been remarkably easy to give up his career, his friends, the rest of their family, to protect River from those people. She was, after all, his little sister, there was no way he couldn't at least try to protect her. Wherever River was, Simon would make his home. River just happened to feel at home on Serenity, the crew becoming almost a family for them. They had their problems, but everybody was there for each other, a created family so far out in the black, protection. That saying "home is where the heart is" couldn't be more true for Simon Tam, because home would always be his little sister. 

2} Mal 

Mal had a few good memories of home back when it meant the ranch on Shadow. He remembered tussling in the dirt with the big sheepdog his Mama kept for herding. He must have been five or six then, the dog had been bigger than he had. He remembered the first time he'd ridden a horse without one of the ranch hands behind him, he'd been young then too. He remembers the first time he saw a spaceship. He remembers wondering why anyone would want to leave someplace as beautiful as Shadow, with it's open land and ranches and streams for fishing and swimming. It was lots of hard work, living on a ranch, but Mal had never had a problem with hard work. When he was younger he'd lived for the sore feeling he had after a good day's work. It was proof he was alive. 

But he didn't like to remember home, because with every good memory came the reason he'd left. The sight of the devastation that had become his mother's ranch after the Alliance had blazed through. There'd been some fighting around, and a group of Alliance solders wanted set up camp on his mother's land. Well, she didn't like that idea one bit, neither did the boys. Mal was the only one who'd survived. He'd run, he'd run straight to the Independent army. And that was the end of him ever calling someplace home, at least someplace on the ground. 

Now when Mal thinks of home, he hears the gentle hum of Serenity's engines, singing to him constantly. She quiets the memories that try to force through his mind as he sleeps. And when he wakes up in the night, sweating and panting and hoping he didn't scream, she reminds him that he's not still there amid the destruction that everything before her in his life was. Serenity was home, and her crew was family, and for that he was grateful. 

3} Kaylee 

She'd never really felt much at home back there. Sure she loved her Daddy and Momma more than anything in the 'verse, but there just wasn't any kind of challenge on that planet for her. For as long as she could remember, she'd look out at the stars and thought about getting off world. She'd see the ships leaving from the docks and think, 'I should be there'. And whenever her Daddy had work for her, fixing tractors and mules and bits, she'd smile and imagine that they were ship engines, like the ones she saw with the boys. The boys had started innocently enough, she'd been seventeen and tagging along with her brothers down at the docks, and there was a real handsome man drinking at the bar Tom had stopped off at with her, and he'd smiled real nice and said told her how he was a mechanic on one of the boats docked nearby. 

"Wanna see her?" He said, smiling not as smoothly as before. She'd said she would and before she knew it they were kissing and touching, wasn't her first time, of course, naw she'd lost it to the Chan boy when she was fifteen, still this was different. And from then on she spent more time at the docks, talking to the mechanics, sometimes more than talking. She picked up a bit of coin every now and again for helping out with particular engine troubles, but still she saw no way off the planet. That was until Serenity. 

Which lead to now, Kaylee had finally found a place she liked, a place to call home. Even some people she cared about almost as much as she cared about her family back on the planet she'd left behind. She had a ship to take care of, and Serenity had her fair share of troubles, but they weren't nothing Kaylee couldn't fix given enough love, and a new catalyzer every once in a while.

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Title:   **Where the Heart Is**   
Author:   **Claramata**   [website]   
Details:   **Standalone**  |  **PG-13**  |  **gen**  |  **5k**  |  **12/29/05**   
Characters:  Malcolm, Kaylee, Simon   
Summary:  Three vignettes on Serenity, and how she's home.   
Notes:  Slight spoilers for "Out of Gas" and "Our Mrs. Reynolds"   
  



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